Tuesday, 10 May 2016

Nineveh Southwest Palace

In
1995, a relief sculpture looted from the Nineveh site museum was
documented on the antiquities market (Russell 1998: 15, pl. 276).
Additional sculptures were soon discovered on the market (Russell 1996).
This led to a detailed cataloging and assessment of the Throne-Room
Suite of Sennacherib’s Palace (Russell 1998).
Photographs taken in 2013 by Iraqi excavators show the palace in
disrepair after years of neglect as a result of 2003 Operation Iraqi
Freedom. Google Earth and DigitalGlobe imagery show that between June 3,
2002 and June 24, 2003 the roof covering the palace was stolen,
exposing the palace interior. The World Monuments Fund replaced this
roof in 2004.

Now the site has been extensively damaged:

DigitalGlobe satellite imagery from May 8, 2016 shows the Palace of Sennacherib (Southwest Palace) at Nineveh has been completely dismantled, likely the result of scrap metal harvesting. This new imagery demonstrates that the economic exploitation of ancient Nineveh is even more severe than previously assessed.
Between April 1, 2016 and May 2, 2016 the protective roof over the palace area, installed in 2004, was removed and the metal likely sold for scrap or reused. [...]
Between May 2 to May 8, 2016, the palace was further dismantled with the remaining metal pillars between Rooms I and V completely removed and the rest of the brick walls of Rooms I, IV, and V almost totally dismantled. Only small sections of the southern and western walls of Room V and the south wall of Room IV remain. Vehicle tracks now can be seen going inside the palace rooms, likely to remove the debris from the interior walls, and also now running directly through the Grand Entrance

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About Me

British archaeologist living and working in Warsaw, Poland. Since the early 1990s (or even longer) a primary interest has been research on artefact hunting and collecting and the market in portable antiquities in the international context and their effect on the archaeological record.

Abbreviations used in this blog

"coiney" - a term I use for private collector of dug up ancient coins, particularly a member of the Moneta-L forum or the ACCG

"heap-of-artefacts-on-a-table-collecting" the term rather speaks for itself, an accumulation of loose artefacts with no attempt to link each item with documented origins. Most often used to refer to metal detectorists (ice-cream tubs-full) and ancient coin collectors (Roman coins sold in aggregated bulk lots)